From the “fire and ice” department, Craig Kelly writes on Facebook
The entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
In the attached picture, recently taken in Sweden, freezing cold weather has caused the rotor blades of a wind turbine to ice up bringing the blades to a complete stop.
To fix the “problem” a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.
The aviation fuel, the diesel for the truck, and the oil burned to heat the water, could produce more electricity (at the right time to meet demand) than the unfrozen wind turbine could ever produce. (Before it freezes up again).
The attached picture is a metaphor of the complete insanity of the climate change debate.
In decades to come this one photo alone with sum up an era of stupidity, when rational thought, logic and commonsense was abandoned and immense wealth and resources needlessly sacrificed.
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Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
Another demonstration of liberal insanity.
T. Madigan
January 24, 2016 at 1:01 pm
If you want to have a reasoned discussion, stop with the ad-hominems, you will end up talking to yourself. Neither, I don’t have the time and no matter what I say, it will be a waste of whatever time I’ve invested in my reply.
I’ll assume that ENGLISH is not your first language, so I’ll forgive you for the above nonsense !
I’m actually bi-lingual, have advanced degrees is physics and astronomy and lose more functioning brain cells after a glass of wine than you were ever born with.
Yup, sure..I believe ya ..honest !! ROTFLMAO !!
Nothing like a reasoned conversation with no ad hom baiting.
Glad to see you got your wish, TM.
Thanks, but I’m not into astrology…sorry to hear about your [trimmed] !!
That would be astronomy, you know a real science, not astrology.
…OMG…I’ve been trimmed !!! LOL
T. Madigan…I checked your web page..it’ astrology !
No, it’s “Astronomy”; look at the site banner. Bye
OMG…you’re over your head !!
This adds NOTHING to the debate! Puhlease! Take your bun fight outside!
T. Madigan: “have advanced degrees is physics and astronomy and lose more functioning brain cells after a glass of wine than you were ever born with.”
Clearly the number of glasses of wine you have drunk must be astronomical.
….Menicholas. I see you have found your coffee !! ( re: your thread way above ” need more coffee ” )…..
Couple of points with blade deicing.
That fluid they are spraying would have to be de-ice fluid. Spraying hot water on an aerofoil will just end up with clear ice all over the blade. The water does not have enough energy to heat the entire blade. So they must be polluting the environment with de-ice fluid.
And heating the blade is not going to work. Aircraft wings are only heated on the leading edge, because that is the only part that matters on a moving aerofoil. However, if the wing stops rotating then the entire wing gets covered – just like these blades. And when that happens, you have to deice the entire blade, just as you see at an airport.
I cannot imagine any blade deice system that would heat the entire blade, instead of just the leading edge. These systems tend to be very expensive, and difficult to engineer into composite blades without reducing strength and reducing aerodynamic efficiency. Why do you think they have not been added to blades thus far?
R
Forethought is not a liberal concept !!
“I cannot imagine any blade deice system that would heat the entire blade,”
Try to imagine Hot air
http://www.slideshare.net/WinterwindConference/further-development-of-enercons-deicing-system-christoffer-jonsson-enercon
&
The Vestas de-icing system (VDS) consists of a heating unit in the hub to distribute hot air throughout the blades. The outer third of the blade and two thirds of the leading edge are fully de-iced.
the heating unit uses 150kW,
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1217693/vestas-reveals-de-icing-system
“The outer third of the blade and two thirds of the leading edge are fully de-iced.”
Thanks, but that’s not good enough to avoid disaster.
Out of curiosity…what airline company would you fly with given such “outer third of the blade and two thirds of the leading edge” assurances?
There was a thread here a couple of years ago about how ice falling from a wind turbine is extremely dangerous and could potentially kill someone. I can’t find the thread however.
Sorry, not only falling but being thrown off the blades while in operation and travelling quite a distance in fact.
Hi, Patrick MJD. I couldn’t find (didn’t look all that hard, though) that WUWT wind turbine ice danger thread. I did find the Rutgers U. analysis of Wind Throw Distance (1,680 feet).
Here: http://xray.rutgers.edu/~matilsky/windmills/throw.html
(caps in original text)
Yes Janice, sums it up well. Nasty things. Sure they have their place in the energy mix, but not a replacement for good old coal, oil and gas!
>>The outer third of the blade and two thirds of
>>the leading edge are fully de-iced.
That would be fine for when the blade is turning. But when it is stopped and it snows, the entire clade gets covered. Especially as they normall turn these things into wind. And while I suppose you could operate it with snow on the center 2/3 of the blade, there would be severe efficiency losses, and possible imbalance-vibration issues. And these windelecs (turbines) have enough trouble standing upright as it is, without extra vibrations (and ice-bomb shedding).
As an aside, with aircraft covered in thick snow a very weak hot solution is often used first, just to get rid of the snow. But then this has to be backed up with a de-ice 50-50 or 75-25 solution, otherwise the water will refreeze on the wing. And clear ice all over a windelec blade would lead to yet more imbalance-vibration issues. The only possibility for just using hot water, would be if ambient temperatures were already positive. But if temps were positive, the snow would not stick on the bkade for very long anyway.
Ralph
I read where each chopper-load of truck-heated water is 850L. No mention of chemicals added…but it was a Swedish paper, so they wouldn’t mention it, would they? Would be interesting to know.
Anyway, let’s give the blade-warming technology time to suck. Should be funny – but patience!
Apart from the billions down the toilet (which we should be used to by now) there’s a lot of humour in this climate-tackling solution stuff: Woodchips-to-Drax, Gas-to-Ivanpah, Brandenburg solar at 50+ degrees north…
But I still say NSW’s very own wave power generator is top of the comedy pops:
http://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/resize/frm/storypad-etJBba7Xdfpi8EFGYJPPtt/9dce4663-16fb-4cc5-81bf-d5744c261c57.jpg/w1200_h678_fmax.jpg
Here in Oz we also have unused desalination plants in a number of capital cities, deemed necessary during the last drought because the rains would never again be sufficient. They got them built, despite flood delays, and they now cost upward half a million per day to do absolutely nothing. The Sydney one had its roof wrecked by a cyclonic storm a few weeks back. Seems it was raining pretty hard that day.
Stay funny, warmies.
Desanityation plants. I like the idea but they cost too much. 😎
Is that the HMS Obama ???
“The aviation fuel, the diesel for the truck, and the oil burned to heat the water, could produce more electricity (at the right time to meet demand) than the unfrozen wind turbine could ever produce. (Before it freezes up again).”
This statement is false by between three and four orders of magnitude.
So show us your calculations…….or are you guessing
Rough calculations:
2.5MW turbine, average 40% capacity factor = 1MW average (0.4*2.5) power for 20 years.
20 years * 8760 hours per year * 1MW = 175,200MWh
GGe of jet fuel ~= 30kWh/gallon = 0.030MWh/gallon
175,200MWh/0.030kWh/gallon = 5,840,000 gallons of jet fuel equivalent
Approximate use by helicopter (rough guess) = 80 gallons. We’ll be really generous and double it for warming the water.
5,840,000/160 = 36,500 (ratio between lifetime generation and deicing energy)
So, you’re right, my error. Actual falsehood is between four and five orders of magnitude, not three and four.
Further, the operator claims, “The cost to deice a turbine is equivalent to two days of electricity.” (http://iceagenow.info/ice-freezes-windmills-sweden/)
Watts should retract the article since it’s so obviously false.
lj: “Rough calculations:
average 40% capacity factor …20 years… Approximate use by helicopter (rough guess)… “
No estimate for the cost of the de-icing agent, and assumption that this was a one-off event.
Just like the man said, you’re guessing – and stone me, you are so obtuse you even admit it!
Not particularly convincingly, either.
So it’s you, not Anthony, who needs to retract.
Floating Windmills? Missed this in the general sh8te that rumbles along in UK (and its a terrible URL). Please discuss. Or has it been already?
http://www.statoil.com/en/TechnologyInnovation/NewEnergy/RenewablePowerProduction/Offshore/HywindScotland/Pages/default.aspx?redirectShortUrl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.statoil.com%2fHywindScotland
Couldn’t they just have covered the blades with teflon?
Here in Sweden many people think that wind power will save the planet. First problem to attack is the ignorence shown among politician, that seems not to understand the difference between energy and effect. Heavy subsidiary to energy will end up in problems with shortage of effect when top load is required. Unless someone comes up with a miracuolos way of storing energy. 20 percent – or nowadays 25 percent – is an equivalent figure that says how many hours the capacity factor showing how many hours a turbine operate at installed effect to. The problem is that it varies from zero to hundred percent. As a national figure for the grid system we use 6 percent as a safe asset at top load.
Sorry to say but we are not smarter than Einstein suggested. Yet.
Scream for polluting the earth and air by using engine fuel to clear the wind turbine blades to run the wind turbines, yep failure to install heat like you can for car seats. BTW: once up and running won’t the engine fuel heat and cause a fire or blow the units up?
This article discusses the difference between Social Engineering and Real Engineering:
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/nipigon-bridge-failure-social-vs-real-engineering/
As the Mythbusters guys would say, “There’s your problem!”
Great, even more blades to chop birds with
As far as I’m concerned, the comments section of this article might as well be closed as I’ve written all I’m going to write/comment/reply on it. I don’t care what you have to say or what your opinion is regarding any aspect of this article or what I’ve said. I’m done and you will not get any further responses from me here.
I always enjoy seeing an alarmist concede because he doesn’t have credible facts to support the ‘climate change’ hoax, or the related and just as stupid ‘alternative energy’ scam.
[ID thief. -mod]
Simply place a herd of cattle beneath each windmill and the Flatulence generated will defrost the turbines
I have said it before. We are pretty much [trimmed] as species.
Mark
http://minimalistlifestyle.wordpress.com
The windmills in the facility in Palm Springs have been responsible for killing numerous birds including some of the bald eagles in the area. The solar panel facilities in Nevada and Callifornia are responsible for killing numerous birds by cooking them from the heat generated by the panels.
So if we want kill more bald eagles, keep creating these types of installations.
Also, 16,000 people installed solar panels on their rooftops in Las Vegas at a cost of $20K to 40K per installation for the net metering program and lo and behold, Warren Buffet purchased NV Energy and dramatically reduced the pricing being paid for excess energy sold to NV Energy by these fleeced homeowners and now the homeowners want the government to further subsidize them in addition to the subsidies they received from the government on the original installation. Who made out on this program, why it is the solar installation snake oil companies.
Bob wrote, “The solar panel facilities in Nevada and Callifornia are responsible for killing numerous birds by cooking them from the heat generated by the panels.”
“Solar panel” usually refers to solar photovoltaic panels. Those don’t cook birds. The raptor rotisseries are the solar thermal generators, like Ivanpah, which use vast arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight on boilers, to make steam, to drive turbine generators.